'Yes, Mr. Calcott says that he lives in fear of some one offering him a living,' said Lord Ormersfield.
'And the dear old Giraffe?' said Louis.
'Clara? She is looking almost handsome. I wish some good man would marry her. She would make an excellent wife.'
'I am not ready to spare her yet,' said Mary; 'I must make acquaintance with her before any excellent man carries her off.'
'But there is a marriage that will surprise you,' said the Earl; 'your eldest cousin, whose name I can never remember-'
'Virginia,' cried Louis. 'Captain Lonsdale, I hope!'
'What could have made you fix on him?'
'Because the barricades could not have been in vain, and he was an excellent fellow, to whom I owe a great deal of gratitude. He kept my aunt's terrors in abeyance most gallantly; and little Virginia drank in his words, and built up a hero! But how was it?'
'You remember that Lady Conway would not take our advice, and stay quietly at home. On the first steamer she fell in with this captain, and it seems that she was helpless enough, without her former butler, to be very grateful to him for managing her passports and conducting her through Germany. And the conclusion was, that she herself had encouraged him so far, that she really had not any justification in refusing when he proposed for the young lady, as he is fairly provided for.'
'My poor aunt! No one ever pities her when she is 'hoist with her own petard!' I am glad poor Virginia is to be happy in her own way.'
'I shall send my congratulations to-morrow,' said the Earl, smiling triumphantly, 'and a piece of intelligence of my own. At H. B. M. Consul's, Lima-what day was it, Louis?'
Mary ran away to take off her bonnet, as much surprised by the Earl's mirth as if she had seen primroses in December. Yet such blossoms are sometimes tempted forth; and affection was breathing something like a second spring on the life so long unnaturally chilled and blighted. If his shoulders were bowed, his figure had lost much of its rigidity; and though his locks were thinned and whitened, and his countenance slightly aged, yet the softened look and the more frequent smile had smoothed away the sternness, and given gentleness to his dignity.
No sooner was she out of the room than Lord Ormersfield asked, 'And what have you done with the Spanish woman?'
The answer excited a peal of laughter, which made Louis stand aghast, both at such unprecedented merriment and at the cause; for hitherto he had so entirely felt with Mary, as never to have seen the ludicrous aspect of the elopement. Presently, however, he was amused by perceiving that his father not merely regarded it as a relief from an embarrassing charge, but as an entire acquittal for his own conscience for any slanders he had formerly believed of Dona Rosita.
Louis briefly explained that, the poor lady being provided for by Robson's investments in America, he had thought it right that the Ponsonby share of the firm should bear the loss through these embezzlements; and he had found that her extravagance had made such inroads on the property, that while the Dynevor share (always the largest) resulted in a fair competence, Louis had saved nothing out of the wreck of the Ponsonby affairs but Mary herself. 'Can you excuse it, father?' he said, with all the old debonnaire manner.
'You will never be a rich man, Louis. You and she will have some cares, but-' and his voice grew thick-'you are rich in what makes life happy. You have left me nothing more to ask or wish for!'
'Except that I may be worthy of her, father. You first taught me how she ought to be loved. You have been very patient with me all this time. I feel as if I must thank you for her-' and then, changing his tone as she opened the door-'Look at her now she has her bonnet off-does not she look natural?'
'I am sure I feel so,' said Mary. 'You know this always seemed more like home than anything else.'
'Yes, and now I do feel sure that I have you at last, Mary. That Moorish castle of yours used to make me afraid of wakening: it was so much fitter for Isabel's fantastic Viscount. By-the-bye, has she brought that book out?'
'Oh, yes, and James is nearly as proud of it as he is of his son. He actually wanted me to read it! He tells me it is selling very well, and I hope it may really bring them in something.'
'Now, then-there's the tea. Sit down, Mary, and look exactly as you did the morning I came home and found you.'
'I'm afraid I cannot,' said Mary, looking up in his face with an arch, deprecating expression.
'Why not?'
'Don't you know that I am so much happier?'
Before breakfast next morning Fitzjocelyn must visit his farm, and Mary must come with him.
How delicious was that English morning after their voyage; the slant rays of the sun silvering the turf, and casting rainbows across the gossamer threads from one brown bent to another; the harvest fields on the slopes dotted with rich sheaves of wheat; the coppices, in their summer glory, here and there touched with the gold of early autumn, and the slopes and meadows bright with lively green, a pleasant change for eyes fresh from the bare, rugged mountain-side and the rank unwholesome vegetation of Panama. Shaggy little Scottish oxen were feeding on the dewy grass, their black coats looking sleek in the sun beyond the long shadows of the thorns; but as Mary said, laughing, 'Only Farmer Fitjocelyn's cattle came here now,' and she stopped more than once to be introduced to some notable animal, or to hear the history of experiments in fatting beasts.
'There! they have found you out! That's for you,' said Louis, as a merry peal of bells broke out from the church tower, and came joyously up through the tranquil air. 'Yes, Ormersfield, you are greeting a friend! You may be very glad, old place! I wish Mr. Holdsworth would come up to breakfast! Is it too wet for you this way, Mary?'
This way was into Fernydell, and Mary answered, 'Oh, no-no; it is where I most wanted to go with you. We have never been there together since-'
'No, you never would walk with me after I could go alone!' said Louis, with a playful tone of reproach, veiling deep feeling.
In silence he handed her down the rocky steps, plunging deeper among the hazels and rowan-trees; then pausing, he turned aside the luxuriant leaves of a tuft of hartstongue, and showed her, cut on a stone, veiled both by the verdure and the form of the rock, the letters-
Deo Gratias, L. F. 1847.
'I like that!' was all that Mary's full heart allowed her to say.
'Yes,' said Louis, 'I feel quite as thankful for the accident as for the preservation.'
'And that dear mamma was with us,' added Mary. 'Between her and you, it was a blessing to us all. I see these letters are not new; you must have cut them out long ago.'
'As soon as I could get here without help,' he answered. 'I thought I should be able to find the very spot where I lay, by remembering the cross which the bare mountain-ash boughs made against the sky; but by that time they were all leaf and flower; and now, do you see, there they are, with the fruit just formed and blushing.'
'Like other things,' said Mary, reaching after the spray, 'once all blossom, now-'
'Fruit very unripe,' as he said, between a smile and a sigh; 'but there is some encouragement in the world after all, and every project of mine has not turned out like my two specimens of copper ore. You remember them, Mary and our first encounter?'
'Remember it!' said Mary. 'I don't think I forgot a day of that summer.'
'What I brought you here for,' said Louis, 'was to ask you to let me do what I have long wished-to let me put the letter M here?'
'I think you might have done it without leave,' said Mary.
'So I might at first, but by the time I came here again, Mary, you had become in my estimation 'a little more than kin,' and less than- no, I wont say that, but one could not treat you as comfortably as Clara. I lost a cousin one August day, and never found her again!'